


Practical Men of the World

by nigeltde



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Pining, Season 2, first time (ish), post-Nightshifter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:47:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29287053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nigeltde/pseuds/nigeltde
Summary: Take care of your brother.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 18
Kudos: 61





	Practical Men of the World

**Author's Note:**

> Set immediately after Nightshifter. Nothing happens in this. Fair warning!
> 
> I came at this from about fifteen different directions and the help of [Wetsammywinchester](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WetSammyWinchester/pseuds/WetSammyWinchester) and [zmediaoutlet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlybride/pseuds/deadlybride) was critical, thank you!
> 
> Title from the Mountain Goats' Home Again Garden Grove.

They hit the morning rush as they tried to ram their way out of Milwaukee, crawling across downtown, jammed up against stoplights. Every siren needled Sam’s adrenaline crash like he was back in those halls, being run down. Like a rat. He hooked his fingers under the neck of the uniform and tugged the breastplate away from his throat. Nothing else he could do. 

Dean was driving, taut with exhaustion and antsy amid the high hemming buildings, the people around who could look right through their window and see them, and where could they go? Stuck on the bridge nose-to-tail with buses in the morning gloom and the strung red lights of backed-up traffic. Sam had nothing but his leftover fear. He could smell it on himself.

Past the airport they got picked up by the Chicago commute and the traffic swung them faster, exits flicking past, grey road grey verge grey skies. It had been over an hour, nearly two, enough time for that man Henricksen to get something organised. They might round the next bend into a funnel of orange cones and a trap of marked units, a chopper thumping down from above, they might be spotlit and pinned or worse; Sam propped his elbow against the window, fist against his mouth to hide a silent furtive prayer, his knuckles pressed through to his teeth so they felt his lips shape not here, please, not now, and Dean looked over his shoulder and clicked his signal on, split off onto an exit, past a Popeye’s and down into the fields. 

“They might be setting up on the highways,” Dean said, voice like gravel, still pale against the black of the turtleneck. Sam didn’t know what he felt he had to justify. A stolen jacket jammed up in Sam’s armpits. His boots were a size too small and he’d done them up too tight in the rush and even after loosening the laces his calves ached and his feet felt swollen, cramped. It wasn’t like he was gonna forget what they were running from.

Heading east they couldn’t escape Chicago entirely but Dean slung wide, _Black Album_ in the deck, disreputable in the wide avenues and past the golf clubs, down to the stamped-out grids of four-bed-two-bath with their blank-face doors and windows. Sam half-expected to see curtains twitching as they went past. Every twenty minutes he flicked over to FM, listening for news of himself. Dean frowned at him but held his breath all the same as Sam futzed through the local bands. Nothing.

Hours of it.

On the other side of Warsaw Dean pulled into a rest stop, a patch of dirty gravel with a tin-roof shelter, three-sided, snow and cigarette butts banked up on the leeward wall. They brought the car in close and shed their cop armour, their feet on the ground. In his own clothes, bitten by the wind, Sam felt even more a fugitive, shoving bales of gear to the bottom of a trash can and covering it with a few handfuls of dead grass and trash. In the car, his brother broke down the rifles, his face set and serious. 

“I think that creek might have curved around near here somewhere,” Sam said, leaning on the passenger door, fingers numb. Dean shook his head.

“I’ll leave the receivers here, we’ll ditch the rest later.” He stood and Sam backed away to give him room, took shelter in the windbreak, wiped his nose on his sleeve. “You okay?”

“Yeah, fine.” An engine on the road: they both looked over. A big old hay wagon, lost stalks and dead leaves whipping across the lot in its wake. Behind, a newish dark sedan. They tracked it. It didn’t slow, flickering through tree trunks. Dean blew out a long breath through his nose. Snow in the fields came back on him white and stark, bleached all his colour but the red around his eyes. He wasn’t right. He hadn’t been for weeks. Sam didn’t know what to do about it. It was futile, most of the time, to try to look after his brother. “You?”

“Never better.” Dean twisted and cracked his spine. “Gimme ten to stretch my legs.”

“Hell, take twelve.” Sam checked the road again – empty in both directions – and leaned his ass back against the passenger door, crossed his arms and shoved his fists under his pits to keep them warm. It was a mess of old graffiti inside the shelter, tags and big fat illegible words and for good times and even a _JESUS Saves_ in the corner, small and doubting. 

“He shoots, he scores,” Sam murmured, one of Dean’s oldest favourites, Pavlovian by now. He craned his head to look for Dean, around the back. His brother had thrown the receivers in the trash and just kept on walking, right out into the field, growing smaller, hands shoved into his jacket pockets. After a while he kicked something and stopped, pulled his phone out. Bobby, Sam guessed, by the way his shoulders hunched as he hung up and kicked a few more things. The sky was all over cloud, heavy and unforgiving.

Sam watched him trudge all the way back, still leaning on the car, at the end of Dean’s trail of bootprints like he was reeling Dean in. Dean’s lips were pink. He looked shrunk, pinched by the cold and pissed off. He drew his sleeve down and buffed away a mark on the hood. Sam didn’t know how he discriminated. She was dusty nose to tail, rings where the snow and rain had brought dirt out of the sky. 

“I left Bobby a message.”

Sam nodded, pushed upright. “You wanna get chewed out that bad?”

Dean shrugged. “Get it over with,” he muttered, chafing in advance, like he didn’t need Bobby to sigh over him. 

Inside, Sam turned the heater up and held his hands in front of the vent. Outside, more nothing. Another state border dropped. They got lost, briefly, when Dean took the wrong exit out of town and ended up on the highway for a stretch. He’d missed the signs. It was unlike him. Sam kept his mouth shut, out at the sky. Considered praying again and discarded the idea. He didn’t have the faintest clue whether Jesus saved or not but all his prayers lately were too much like bargaining, too desperate and poor with so little to offer: no obedience, no real faith beyond hope. He wasn’t who he wanted to be. The only thing he had was who he was with.

He looked at Dean and Dean said, like he was waiting for it: “You should get some sleep.”

“Nah,” Sam said, dry and tired. He wasn’t gonna be able to sleep; if there was a chance of that his body would have taken him out already. They were deep in Ohio by then, pointed east on the long straight faded blacktop, swooping irrigation rigs and the occasional unhitched trailer. Thirty-five, maybe forty hours now they’d been up. Dean had been mainlining sugar for the last half hour, raiding the stash instead of stopping for lunch. Sam was waiting for it to hit. 

Dean drummed his fingers on the wheel, twitchy staccato. Sam checked his watch and flipped the radio over to the local news.

_—ilwaukee overnight, said a woman, two men took hostages in a City Bank before escaping. Federal agents are seeking information—_

Dean stabbed the tape back on, turned the volume down. “We’re clear for now,” he said, and flicked a too-bright look Sam’s way. “No way am I gonna let you get arrested in Ohio. The shame would kill me.”

Sam tried to smile at him; he wasn’t sure how well it went. His eyes were grainy. His arm ached where the bone had healed, a feeling he’d learned early on came with exhaustion. “So, do we have an actual plan? Or does it start and end at wilful ignorance?”

Dean fished a Twizzler out of the packet next to his thigh and shoved the end in his mouth, worked it like a cigar. “We're on the lam, kid,” he said, in an Edward G. Robinson voice, slanted and stupid. “We're blowin this joint, see? We're holin up, we’re going to ground.”

“You’re an idiot,” Sam said; but looking at him, his ridiculous face, all the gel in his hair gone from the beanie, flat and askew from being worried at; it bubbled up in him, a laugh, high and kinda hysterical. Dean, thrilled, waggled his eyebrows. Sam snatched the Twizzler out his mouth and let him squawk, took a bite of pure sugar and felt something reset. The road noise, the engine, the vinyl at his back catching against his shirt; the flat stretched land outside. Moving under their own power, Milwaukee hours and hours and hours behind them. They got out of there. They got _out_ of there, Jesus Christ.

“Holy shit,” Sam said, incredulous, an octave high; a part of him that was still in the city snapped back elastic into his chest like a punch. Dean looked at him, eyes gleaming. “Did we make it?”

“Think we made it, Sammy,” Dean said, and freed a manic grin that turned Sam inside out, made him wanna reach over and grab Dean by the shoulders and shake him apart until he laughed clear and easy and grabbed Sam back, or squeezed him or punched him or shook him or grappled him in close so it would felt real in his body, so he would know it, and say it again: they made it.

“Holy shit,” he said again, wondering. He didn’t grab at Dean. His eyes were wet with relief or shock or some sort of comedown and he turned his face towards the fading sun and made a big deal of balling up a hoodie to sleep against, tremor in his hands and his nerves like strung wire and like that still when he woke not long after, Dean idling into a drive-through chicken place under a highway exit. Lit up in the sky a sign said PITTSBURGH 1 MILE and they ate on the move, circling up to it and down to the city, up into the slopes.

The streets were tiny, dark, winding; the houses settled. Dean knew about a townhouse from a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who was apparently happy to let a nice place go to ruin. Upstairs was a hazard, floorboards that sagged under Sam’s feet and cracks in the walls shown up stark by the lantern. Downstairs was a kitchen and a table and a mattress. There was, of course, no power.

Dean threw a puddle of blankets and sleeping bags on the mattress, set the lantern on the table, and unrolled his sleep clothes to reveal a bottle of bourbon, made a noise of satisfaction. They were midway up the hill and not so far over the river. The towers downtown beamed in the night, cold and glitzy, when Sam lifted the blinds. 

“Check it out,” he said, breath clouding the glass. In the reflection Dean was a shadow, moving, changing out of his jeans. Sam heard the grin in his voice.

“Rube,” he said, like Sam hadn’t been with him eighteen hours ago when they’d driven out of a city, like Sam hadn’t been right there to see his dumbstruck face the first time they hit New York. He folded his arms and leaned on the windowsill and stared out at the lights some more, the empty offices of a million invisible people. Gave up on them after a while. Turned back in and watched his idiot brother tip half the bottle down his throat, sitting in the centre of the mattress.

There hadn’t been much squatting when they were kids, real little kids, but there’d been plenty of rooms that were just a mattress on the floor and a bundle of blankets. Dad on the couch or gone. Waking up warm with Dean’s arm heavy over his side, feeling him breathe. Good memories.

“Hey, Dillinger,” he said, after a while, mostly to see Dean light up, mouth _Dillinger_. “Don’t hog.” He ambled over and waved his fingers, gimme. Dean reached up and gave. The bottle was warm. He tipped his elbow a few times, kicking off his boots and easing himself down. He ended up on his back and it felt like he’d fallen a long way into a lumpy bundled nest, his shoulders unlocking out of a tension he hadn’t known he was carrying, the bottle set against his hipbone. Warmth in his belly and his dick full, present. Staring up at the ceiling rose and the weird shadows it made in the light of the Coleman. It was peeling, he decided. Probably lead. He should make sure he slept with his mouth closed. He should make sure Dean didn’t snore. 

It was nice to be like this, at the end of a long day, falling into a drunk with his brother.

“Bonnie and Clyde,” Dean murmured. He was sitting, cross-legged, looking down at Sam, half-grin on his face. He had a blanket over his shoulders and a couple layers on still, unbuttoned flannel and his dark shirt that showed up the amulet. 

“Huh?” Sam drank, licked his lips. Found Dean’s eyes, watching him. “Just pass out already would you?”

Dean shrugged. “Ain’t that easy.” He took the bottle back, angled it against the light. There wasn’t much left. 

“I know.” Sam said, quiet. “Sometimes I wake up and I can tell.”

He raised his eyebrow. “Spying on me now.”

Sam rolled his head, boneslack, stared up at Dean, strange new angle on a familiar face. The skin under his jaw looked soft and thin when he lifted it to drink, even with a brushing of stubble. He touched his lip with his tongue.

“I don’t need to spy.” He watched, openly, the colour rise in Dean’s cheeks. It made him think. A couple months ago they’d killed a zombie and Dean had been dead and figured he should have stayed that way and they’d gotten drunk together and Sam had – he didn’t remember much, but he had a real strong memory of Dean sitting bent over on his bed looking half back in the grave, and wanting to do something about it. He remembered how it was to put his body over Dean’s and he remembered Dean’s face fracturing and reforming, slack and easy and – he remembered liking it. 

“We gotta be up early Sam,” Dean said, dry and tired, a small frown creasing his forehead. “Get some sleep, huh?”

“You first,” he said. Dean rolled his eyes and he propped himself up a little and made a hot noise in the back of his throat and heard his voice blur, mouth clumsy. “You need a hand?”

Dean tensed, gathering up into flight and he said _hey, shh_ , humped himself closer and fumbled his hand onto Dean’s knee, felt it jump. He rolled into an unsure resistance, Dean’s stiff solid body giving way unevenly, braced back on his arms, mouth parted and soft but his neck rigid as Sam looked up at him and he said hey, against Dean’s side, nosed under his flannels and bit through his shirt into the wave of his ribs, rising and falling precipitously. Dean gasped _Sam_ , Sammy, _wait_ , as he got his hand inside Dean’s trackpants and closed around his dick, plump and warm and reliable and his mouth flooded with spit and he groaned, bit him again, world trending sideways and getting blacker, like the Coleman was fading: his nose bent against Dean’s stomach; he pushed Dean from under him; pushed his shirt aside. He had skin under his tongue, salt. A car chugged by outside thumping music. Down between Dean’s legs he looked up and said _hey_ again and grinned, and Dean, eyes blown wide, cheeks dark, laughed, shocked and light and breathless even as he heaved up against Sam, his dick big and urgent now, his calloused thumb pressing Sam’s earlobe, his fingers curling in Sam’s hair and needy, firm against Sam's skull, pulling him close, pulling him in.

::

His eyes cracked open to Dean bending the blinds and squinting at the street, opening a diamond of winter light upon himself, pale and smooth, his lips pursed. “Yeah I know, I know, Jesus,” he was saying, taut, into his phone. “I don’t know. He’s the freaking Terminator, he’s been everywhere, he knew about Dad, he knew _everything_. This whole time and I didn’t even—”

A pause. Sam, sour-mouthed and gross, old sweat griming his skin, tried to scrape the fuzz off his tongue with his teeth. He touched his throat; swallowed, winced. A headache knocked, warning, behind his eyes.

“The _FBI_ , Bobby,” Dean hissed. “Federal’s right in the name. Where am I supposed to go? How am I supposed to—” Another listening pause. He shook his head. “You said he knew Gordon, I’m not trusting him, no way. No way. I don’t trust any of them.”

Sam’s fingers reeked. He sniffed them again to be sure. His stomach turned.

“No, he’s...” Dean looked over and flushed when he noticed Sam watching, straightened. The blinds snapped back into place. “I don’t know what he thinks. Yeah, actually— I just thought of a place. Yeah, I’ll talk to him. Yeah, thanks. Talk then.”

He closed the phone, looking down at his hand. “Bobby’s gonna keep an eye on things for us,” he said. “But we can’t stay here. You can travel, can’t you?”

Sam nodded. “I’m fine.” It came out rough. His cheeks burned. Dean twitched. There was a sound coming from the other side of the wall, next door; TV, he realised after a moment. A morning show, hysterical in its cheer. His neck hurt; his eyes hurt. The back of his mouth felt pounded. “Is there a shower?”

“Yeah. No heat though.”

“We need better friends,” Sam said, and Dean gifted him a brief vacant smile, preoccupied. Twisted the rod so the blinds poured open, made Sam groan and drag the blanket up over his head. The close thick smell of hangover sweat and dust and stale sex. His stomach turned, high and suspended. 

Dean’s voice, muffled. “You alive in there?”

Sam rubbed his eyes. “No.”

A pause. “Okay, well. Try not to suffocate, I guess. I’ll be back.”

A door closed, and when he lifted his head Dean was gone.

He shoved the blankets clear, grabbed a handful of clean clothes. Standing was a chore but he dragged himself down the hall to a basin of frigid water in a frigid bathroom, stood barefoot on his shirt and bent over the tap, gargled, spat, wiped water from his chin in a gesture that felt like an echo. His headache faded.

He lathered up a washrag and undressed, tried to scrub the stank out of his pits as fast as possible. His pubes were crusty, took work to clean; his dick hung limp and dark and offended in the cold. The air woke up a sting high on his back, raw little prickles, obscured no matter which way he turned to the mirror. Fingernails? Bed bugs?

Boards creaked on the other side of the door as he was putting on his boxers, one-legged and bent over. He looked up, alarmed.

“I got breakfast,” Dean called through. Sam could picture the perfect hesitant line of his shoulders. “You should eat something.”

“Okay,” he called, hopping a little pulling his boxers up. 

“We need to get moving.”

Wanted men, that was right. He closed his eyes, briefly. Christ. One thing at a time. He was hungover and he’d fucked up enough last night for three lifetimes and he just needed things to come at him in order.

“Sam? We can’t wait for the car to get noticed.”

“Yeah,” Sam called, grabbing for his shirt. “I heard.”

Dean cleared his throat. “I gotta take a piss.”

“I won’t be long.”

A grunt, steps creaking away. Dean was being careful with him. He remembered, probably. He hadn’t looked that hungover, but then again: he rarely did. 

He closed his eyes again, breathed deep until it was just him and his heart and his sour mouth, thought _Please let me be—_ and then stopped, ashamed. Nothing for himself. Two weeks ago at that inn he’d taken his brother’s face between his hands and forced him into a promise he didn’t want to keep. As far as he could figure, something pretty much the same last night. Too much he was taking for himself.

 _Just give him a break_ , he said, inwardly, curling his fingers at his chest, between his ribs, like he could hold the prayer in there. You’re not blind. He needs a break, let him be okay.

Whatever was listening cast its dispassionate eye on him and answered, How is this not a selfish wish?

Sam sighed, opened his eyes. Still red. His hair wouldn’t settle, even damp, curling petulant at the ends. The fresh clothes felt better on his skin at least, warm in this chilly little bathroom with its half-dozen intact tiles.

A dim dusty hall, a kitchen. Sam stepped forward, brought him into view.

He was leaning against the bench under the kitchen window, staring at the lino. Half-eaten Mars Bar in his hand. He had bags under his eyes, seemed like he was scraped as thin as yesterday. He was wearing one of Sam’s shirts, a v-neck that sat a little loose and low and he had a bruise just above his collarbone. He’d been beaten up a couple times in the last few days. Could be anything. Sam didn’t think he’d—gotten that high, last night.

His hair looked soft. Sam’s hand closed on nothing, involuntary. He opened it again and wiped his palm on his jeans, swallowed.

“Hey,” he said. Dean’s eyes flicked up, away.

“Hey.”

Sam shifted, tapped his fingers on his thigh. It was hard not to look at the nest of blankets. “So, where are we gonna go?”

“Caleb’s place.”

“Nebraska?”

“His other place,” Dean said. “The trailer on Black Lake. Olive Grove, Berry Grove, something like that. Remember? He had that little dinghy. Probably about five people in the whole country who know about it and two of them are dead. Should be safe if we keep our heads down.”

Sam frowned. “I don’t remember it.”

“Yeah, Dad took us when...” Dean snapped his fingers a couple of times, searching for a memory; his face cleared, and clouded again. “You were off being a geek.”

“Oh.”

A pause; Dean made a face at the remainder of his chocolate and folded the wrapper over, put it in his pocket. Nodded at a plastic bag on the counter. “Eat something.”

There was a cup of coffee, too, in cardboard, steaming gently beside. He couldn’t have been less hungry. It took him a second to make his mouth work. “Thanks.”

“De nada.” Dean shrugged. He might be blushing. It was hard to tell, with the light behind him, directing his questions at the floor. “How’s your head?”

Sam touched the back of his skull. It felt okay. “What happened to my head?”

“You drank twice your bodyweight,” Dean said, dry. He looked at Sam, finally. He wasn’t all right. Jesus, if there was any way a person could find to fuck something up, Sam would find it. “You good?”

“Yeah.”

“Really?”

Sam nodded, lied. “Really. I mean, I could do with a general anaesthetic, but I’m okay.”

Dean paid his half-joke with a half-smile that faded into another lull, and then, improbably, yawned. In the silence, next door’s TV rose again. A woman laughing; morning show brass. Sam stared at the wall, tracked orange circles across the faded paper, crowded and multiplied and illusory. Carrados, he thought, out of nowhere; Martin Carrados, his RA. He’d been a runner, tall, fond of morning exercise and the same roads Sam jogged at dawn. They’d climbed the stairs together, five or six times, and end up in Martin’s room. Letting off steam; giving someone a hand. They hadn’t gone any further than that. He’d met Jess.

Dean dug his thumb at the corner of his eye and flicked away whatever he found, folded his arms, summoning courage. “Sam—”

“Maybe I should take the first leg,” Sam said.

Dean blinked at him, derailed. “You want me to let you drive?”

“You look like you need the sleep.”

“Have you looked in a mirror?”

“Have you?” Sam said, and lifted his chin.

“You don’t even know where we’re going. Nah, Sam, you’re hungover as shit, it’s okay.”

“I know what direction Louisiana is. Couple Advil and I got this.” Dean kept shaking his head. “You don’t need to worry about me,” he said, quiet. Dean looked at him a while.

“Worry’s all I’ve got,” he said, eventually, this careful watchful version of himself; Sam wished he’d woken up angry instead of treading so light, so cautious. Sam wasn’t gonna jump him, wasn’t gonna force him to talk. He was ten kinds of idiot but not that kind.

“Whatever, I got drunk again, I’m paying the price,” Sam said, heard the sour edge in his voice, and that turned Dean’s face away. “I’m fine.”

Dean’s lips thinned. “Sure, Sam.” He waved his hand. “I gotta hit the head.”

Sam turned his shoulders and spread his arms, making room in the doorway with his eyes on the ceiling, like an asshole. The bathroom door closed. Sam scrubbed the corner of his jaw and sighed, like an asshole, and dragged his feet into the kitchen, hooked a finger in the plastic bag and pulled it open. Advil. More chocolate. Something muffin-shaped, soaking through greasepaper. A banana. Bottle of yellow Powerade. Two newspapers, refolded shoddily.

He’d think it was a bribe if it wasn’t something Dean did for him half the time anyway.

He took the coffee over to the dining room. The blankets he shoved in the laundry bag, stale acrid smell puffing up to him, and tossed towards the door. Bagged the gear Dean had missed and sagged down into a chair exhausted again, folded his arms on the table, and rested his forehead. It was clammy, sweating out his mistakes. Like the aftermath of a vision. He had no one to save.

“Chuck now, or forever hold your pieces,” Dean said, behind him. Landed a hand heavy on Sam’s shoulder, grabbed the duffel by his feet. Sam raised his head to watch him go. Square in his jacket, the unmistakable outward give of his knees. His shadow leading him. From here he looked the same; unmarked by the night. He looked like they didn’t do anything and never had. He’d always been good at believing the stories: Dad did us right, this is the good life, nothing’s wrong with Sam. It was Sam who always plagued them with his scepticism.

Outside the snow was so light and tentative it didn’t want to land; it eddied up with the breeze, kissed his cheek. Sam got stuck on the top step, wincing at the light, air pinching the inside of his nose. The city looked quiet, fog rising on the river.

Dean was loading the car. A small school bus heaved its way up the hill. Kids in uniform with backpacks dragging their shoulders down jostled each other on the way past. This time yesterday Sam was pulling a SWAT mask down over his face after trussing two men and leaving them in a closet. Last night Sam sucked his brother’s dick, which was a vast new frontier for them.

“Keys through the mail slot,” Dean called up, measured. Watching Sam space out. Sam flushed and turned, checked back through the door to see if he’d left anything behind beyond his sanity; locked the door and fed the key ring through.

Being hungover was as good a reason as any to settle into the car mute; to curl his coffee against his chest and watch the day rise and the city fade behind them. Dean was taking them back west. The slow way, under the interstate and into the bleak sticks of the hills.

Back on the lam.

::

That morning it was Maiden, _Seventh Son_. Kept low, out of respect for Sam’s head, maybe, or the oppressive stillness of the world. Old snow thin on the ground and barely a soul or a bird; the occasional truck. Radio fuzzing in and out when Dean flipped it over, swells of static and jumped-in words. Murder-suicide in Beckley; flurries due in Martinsburg. Some union guy’s latest indiscretion.

Sam sighed, opened the _Post-Gazette_ , tried to keep it contained on his side of the car.

“We’re not in there,” Dean said after he’d wrestled with a couple of pages. “The _Times_ neither. Small fry, I guess.”

Feds and a SWAT team, called out for small fry. Sam shook his head. “I saw the TV vans, Dean.”

Dean sniffed. “Only local.”

“Right,” Sam said. “And who cares about Milwaukee anyway?”

“That’s what I’m saying.” Dean drummed his fingers on the wheel, humming along. “Hey, how’d the Pirates go?”

Sam felt a smile come on; bloom warm inside. Losers, his brother had always been soft on losers, anyone hopeless, anyone who’ll break your heart a hundred times. “Are you sure you want me to say?”

Dean flicked him a glance, warmer. “Maybe not.”

“It’s for the best.” He scrubbed at his face, sat up straight. Wake up, get back in the game. He rooted around in the plastic bag for something else to eat. Breakfast muffin, cold and a little squashed. Bacon was good either way. He ate it in three bites, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and the back of his hand on his jeans, threw the wrapper back in the bag, conspicuously, so Dean couldn’t get offended about greasing up the seats. “Did I say thanks?”

“Who can remember,” Dean said. He had a bottle of Sprite settled between his thighs that he uncapped and swigged from. Sam looked away. Two days of this to get to where they were going, he guessed. And then however long in whatever insane hideout Caleb had designed and hope that it was enough and that no one had seen them in the hundred places they’d been and would be.

In his head, that vault kept swinging closed. That look on Dean’s face after he spoke to the man. The Feds had their names, their dad’s name, and there was an agent out there who wanted them, personally, specifically; thinking he knew the worst about them and it barely grazed the surface.

They should have found somewhere with internet yesterday, looked the guy up. Even at night, they could have found somewhere in the city. Would have been smarter than drinking, that was for sure. Another strung-out day running without knowing who they were running from. It was a stellar way to get caught.

He reached out and stole Dean’s Sprite. It was warm. “You know, Dad would have killed us for getting our faces in front of the Feds.”

Dean looked at him, sideways. Twisted his hands on the wheel. “That’s a really helpful observation, Sam.”

“What did he say, though? About Dad?”

“He just talked some crap, trying to get a rise. Knew he was an ex-Marine, moved us around a lot. Said he was a whackjob.”

Sam shook his head. “He shouldn’t have said that.”

“I mean, from the outside.” Dean shrugged. “It doesn’t look good, what we do, that’s not news.”

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“No shit,” Dean said, flat. “Tell you what, I could have used this Dad’s the Greatest shtick about six years ago.”

Sam crossed his arms, looked out the window. Cracked and woven roads; an unremarkable church. The snow looked spoiled, grimy, the colour of the sky. His mistake, bringing up Dad. They’d been around all this, and around, and around, and he should know better. Of all times.

Dean shifted, sighed. “Yeah, he would have been pissed,” he said, in the quiet. “Yeah, he would have kicked my ass to Canada and said don’t come back. But where is he, huh? He said his piece, and then he left.”

Sam stared at him. “He didn’t just _leave_ , he saved your life.”

“Yeah, and that was real sweet of him.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, short. “It was. I’m glad, even if you aren’t.”

Dean threw him a startled glance. Like it was still a surprise Sam wanted him around? How many times did he have to say it? What did he have to _do_?

“Gimme my drink back,” Dean said, softer, to the road in front of him. Sam handed it over and he twisted the lid off one-handed and drank, drawing his lip through his teeth. Sugar, Sam thought. He could still taste it. “I’m glad.”

“Good.” Sam’s cheeks flamed, impotent and embarrassed. He turned his head away. Nowhere to hide out here, in the wide empty world, as the verge rose and sank down into a valley view, folded slopes under a solid grey sky and a horizon so far away it blurred. Pulled through an unreal canvas. The car was alive; Dean was alive; he was alive. They were sitting next to each other. That seemed to be about it.

Somewhere in Kentucky he brushed leaves off a concrete picnic table and laid the _Times_ atop and perched, hunched his shoulders against a bitter wind. Lunch was coffee and a ham sandwich from the Stop N Go beside him. Feet on the bench and his elbows on his knees, watching the cars go past and his brother kick a rock around the edge of the lot, one hand shoved in his pocket. He had his eyes on Dean so he knew when Dean looked at him. He was drinking the same awful coffee and breathing plumes of mist. His nose was pink; his lips looked chewed on. He had the collar of his jacket turned up.

Sam grit his teeth against the wind and fixed his gaze on the sawbladed surface of the hill opposite, the road bulled through in parted curves of concrete. Double-barrelled highways, Dean told him they were called. When they were kids. Leaning over the back of the seat, his elbows dangling. Keeping Sam entertained, playing slapaway with Sam’s feet as Sam kicked at him. Until their dad said that’s enough, and Dean obeyed.

Too many cars around here. They should get moving, out of sight, get back on the county roads, free and off the radar of this Henricksen and his cronies and any keen-eyed sheriff with a stack of bolos on the passenger seat, that malformed sketch of Dean on top. St Louis. Was that where he’d picked up their trail, St Louis? If they got taken down because of that case Sam would never forgive himself. Had Henricksen been back there, talked to Rebecca, traced Sam to Stanford? Combed through his records? Sat on Jess’s mom’s couch, told them Sam was a murderer, a grave-robber? Told them he had a brother just as bad?

The horn tapped, twice, rapid: Dean was sitting in the passenger seat, leaning over. Sam raised his eyebrows but stood, ass damp and freezing, trashed the remains of his lunch. Settled behind the wheel and shifted the seat back. Dean snorted.

“Keep dreaming,” he said, and Sam turned the key and looked at him, amused, until he flushed, switched his attention to a Highway Patrol car, curving around into the lot, coming to a double-parked rest front of the store. Sam backed them out slowly, calmly, innocent as a cloud.

“Should have spiked their gas,” Dean said. It was Sam’s turn to snort.

“You think you’re that quick?”

“You could have distracted them.”

“Yeah. Could have run in there and told the nice patrolmen some vagrant’s messing with their car.”

“There goes your ride,” Dean said, soft regret, shaking his head. “You can hitch from here.”

“I’m _driving_ ,” Sam said, smiling, checking the rearview—no patrol cars—and turned off at the junction. “So is this place gonna have internet?”

Dean hummed, dubious. “Didn’t back in ‘03, and you know Caleb.”

“A slow man to adjust.”

“Surprised he made it out of the Civil War.”

“He tried to teach me to fire a musket once,” Sam said. Dean straightened fast.

“For real? How was it?”

Sam shrugged, turned his hands on the wheel. “Fine. Loud.”

“Kickback?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

Dean’s gaze was heavy, made him itch. In truth he’d declined, shoved his hands in his pockets and tried to be polite. Before he’d hit his growth spurt; Caleb had stank of tobacco and the gun was long and looked too heavy, and he’d been—he’d been in a prissy phase, unreconciled, watching Dean and Dad inspect pistols. He’d had homework he needed to do. He was an alien, soft and short. He didn’t want to be part of it. Dean had looked up at him and said _Check this out, Sammy,_ and he’d dragged his sneakers across the concrete like a hooked fish.

“You really shot a musket?” Dean asked, wistful.

“Yeah.”

“Man, what a waste.”

Sam glanced across the car as the road took them under a highway. Dappled on the other side by giant domed oak skeletons and then they came back into the light again, slipping over Dean’s face, his lips.

Dean had laughed. He’d seen Dean’s dick, thick and cut, and tried to bury it in his throat, salt-taste blooming across his tongue, jaw clicking in and out of lock, so clumsy, and Dean had liked it. Sam had pulled off and jerked him and watched him come, felt him come. It got him so hot he'd blown in his shorts the second Dean groped down there.

He was numb, eyes hot, static fuzzing his head. Sweat in his pits and his mouth feeling that phantom stretch. Intimate with the shape of his brother’s dick, his come-face. He’d do it again. He’d do more, if, if—

He rubbed his hand over his face, looked in the rearview again, haunted. He would do it again. Nothing had stopped him so far.

“They got no idea where we are,” Dean said, out of nowhere, watching him, careful crease between his eyes. “We keep our heads down and get there, we’ll be all right.”

Sam nodded, swallowed, not trusting his voice. The oaks gave sudden way to paddocks, crops. He let his hand fall to the bottom of the wheel and fit his thumbnail under his fingernail and counted off fenceposts in little digs, pulses of pain. Two lanes, straight as an arrow, a truck ahead of them shocking a flock of birds out of a field, rising and panicking and settling again.

“You good?” Dean said, doubtful. Sam sighed.

“Where do I even start with that?”

Dean’s hand, on his thigh, made an aborted little move; the curl of a shrug or a punch. He grunted, shuffled down in his seat, folded his arms and buried his chin in his chest. Sam kept his eyes on the road.

Post-and-rail country. Big barns cresting the hills, fresh paint. The road narrowed over a creek; on the far side, a guy had pulled his pickup over, one hand holding a phone to his ear, his elbow hanging out the window, round red beard, cap jammed down on his head. He looked over the car and raised his eyebrow as they passed, still talking.

Dean was asleep, for real, slumped against the door unknowing. It made Sam’s skin crawl. A stranger, Sam told himself, as the gap increased, truck dwindling in the mirrors. Not a demon, not a cop, never heard his name or seen his brother on the news. Didn’t hail them or pull a gun. No dog loosed; no havoc. The were okay.

Over the border, they funneled across the river, shuffled in amongst the traffic in the early winter dark. Dean was back awake and didn’t have much to say but being this close to Nashville and under highway lights made him uneasy, Sam knew, one path only and lit up like a runway. He pulled them out of it as soon as the tangle let him and started hunting for a place to stop.

“Down there,” Dean said, and Sam flicked the indicator on, followed his nod. Dean had a sense for motels. The Blue Sky, brown and white in the gloom, sandwiched between a Dollar General and a fodder store, VACANCY stuttering and internet at six bucks an hour. In Room 14, Sam dumped his gear on the bed and opened his laptop and listened to his brother hum in the shower.

They were down the end of the building and his websites took an age to load. He spun his pen on his thumb, brought up the county feeds. All medical, except for a tree down in someone’s backyard and a sheriff call-out to the local, which should make Dean feel better about the prospect of a quiet night with his head down.

Still, they had to eat. There was a Hunt Brothers Pizza up at the turnoff; Dean had reflexively dead-armed him when they’d passed. They could grab some pepperoni, hit up the liquor store and come back. The room was threadbare, stale with nicotine and the spray used to cover it up, but it had good heat. Good water, judging by the cloud that followed Dean out of the bathroom.

“Locals onto us?” Dean was in his boxers, towelling his hair in the corner of Sam’s eye.

“Not yet,” Sam said, flipping through tabs. “At least not under our names. What card have you been paying on?” Dean hesitated, lowered his towel. Guilt clear on his face. Sam groaned. “Jesus, I don’t wanna know.”

“Carmine Hamburger.”

Sam set his pen down and stared at Dean, flat. “You’re kidding, right.”

“Come on,” Dean shrugged, offhand. His hair stood up, ridiculous, made him look like a kid. “Dude was too busy reading his Guns N Ammo, he didn’t care.”

“Does _FBI_ mean anything to you?”

“Carmine’s still got a grand coming to him, I’m not just gonna throw it away. I don’t know if you noticed Sam, but this ain’t Oprah’s house. This ain’t even _Gayle’s_ house.”

“It’s not a _joke_ , Dean.”

Dean sniffed. “If I’d known you’d be like this I woulda robbed that bank after all,” he muttered, pissy like always when Sam gave a shit about their lives. He dumped his towel and fished in his bag as a buzzing started up in it, a ringtone, that cheesy little guitar line he seemed to think was cool. “We can eat bread soup tonight if you wanna be such a little bitch about it.”

He came up with one of the old phones they kept on charge, frowned, raised it to his ear. His eyes snapped to Sam and he lost colour so fast that Sam rose thoughtlessly to his feet.

 _Henricksen_? Sam mouthed and Dean nodded, face closed over, straightening, shoulders going back. His lips thinned.

“He didn’t do that,” Dean said, cold, into the phone. “He loved her.”

“Stop _talking_ ,” Sam hissed, rocking back, thinking _Jessica_ in a wave, a blistering flash of her fear at the end before he pushed it aside and refocused on Dean: he was holding Sam’s gaze but he was gone, listening, eyes glossy and dangerous. Sam put a warning hand on his forearm.

Dean flinched. “I don’t turn rat for a play that cheap,” he sneered, into the phone, and Sam yanked it out of his hand and slapped it closed and Dean snatched it right back and hurled it at the wall. It crunched hard, spraying plastic. He bared his teeth. “Like I’d sell out my own brother? Who does he think he is?”

“He’s just trying to get in your head,” Sam said, crouching over the mess.

“Oh, is that what he’s doing? How could I have guessed?” Dean snapped. Even barefoot on carpet Sam heard him pacing. His fingers fumbled, fishing the SIM card out and bending it in half, working it until it broke. Who was this guy? If they kept running blind like this it would be over. They’d be done. He’d never see Dean again.

Sam looked up at him. “When was the last time you used that number?”

Dean stared at the bed a moment, brow furrowed. “Fort Collins maybe.”

“That was months ago,” Sam said. He brushed the hair out of his eyes, braced his forearms on his knees and thought back. “Jesus, that was before Halloween!”

“I know when it was, Sam, I know how time works.”

“What else does he have? And you’re using these stupid names? Do you _wanna_ get caught?”

Dean threw him a dirty look. “Yeah, getting picked up by the Feds is number one on my to-do list, right after every other fucking thing I’m dealing with right now.” Sam clenched his jaw and glared, got the same right back. “Fine, it’ll be Bob Jones from now on, are you happy?”

“No,” Sam said, picked up the bits of phone and dumped them in the bin over by the door. “Not really, no.”

“That makes two of us,” Dean muttered, scrubbed his palms over his face. “You know what this means, right?”

Sam groaned, sat on the end of the bed and then collapsed backwards, thumped into the comforter. His head bounced.

“Yeah. Pack your bags, Sammy.” He slapped at Sam’s knee as he passed, Sam’s leg rolling at the impact. Duffel sounds, clothes. Sam pressed his fingers against his lids, exhaustion crashing. He never unpacked in the first place. He didn’t even get a shower, get to wash off all his hangover sweat, his fear sweat, the last piled-up days.

“I’m blaming you for this,” Sam said, into nothing, the red glow on the insides of his eyelids. It took Dean a moment to reply, and when he did he sounded weird.

“How dare you, I’m an angel.”

Sam pulled his hand from his face, propped it behind his head. Dean was crouched down at his bag, shoving a black mess of clothes to one side. Face tight with guilt. He was still half-dressed, in his boxers and a tee, bare-legged, barefoot on the carpet. It felt like it had been years since Sam had seen his feet. Paid attention. The breadth of his thigh with a dusting of hair; spine showing through his shirt. The bare back of his neck.

He didn’t trust his voice; didn’t trust the feeling in his stomach. “I don’t really blame you,” he said.

“Awesome,” Dean said, curt, something shamed on his face. Sam sat up.

“Dean,” he said, and stopped, not knowing where to go from there. An apology caught in his throat. Silence as his brother dressed, working his way into a pair of jeans, belt still through the loops and hanging. Sam turned his face away, caught himself in the mirror. He didn’t like what he saw.

“Are you hungry?”

Sam shrugged. He had been earlier. He’d lost it. Dean nodded.

“We’ll grab food on the way out,” he said, subdued. “Eat in the car.” He threw his bag over his shoulder, picked up his keys and paused, staring at his hand. His throat worked. He had a look on him Sam recognised from that morning, reluctant, worn and unsure.

“I want something with at least one vegetable in it,” Sam said, so Dean could throw him a measured knowing look, and shake his head, and huff and say sure thing, princess, and buy him greasy roadhouse stir-fry on the way through. Back in the passenger seat Sam chewed steadily on his beef and broccoli and listened to Dean tell him what a chump he was through a mouthful of ground meat and fries.

It was fine, he thought; it was good. At least: it was enough.

They wove the hills into the night, lightless untravelled state roads that took them south across the Alabama border, through a braided junction past the giant silent box of a Walmart and then into no-man’s land. Nothing but the engine, the road, the heater whirring. Every now and then, the still and startling eyes of rabbits and their flashing bodies in the headlights.

Dean cracked the window and the slap of crisp air broke Sam out of a waking doze. He was slumped, his feet jammed up in the stairwell. He rubbed his arm, aching again; rubbed his stinging tired eyes to help them focus and looked for the moon, a muted glow behind clouds. His watch said past midnight. A faint clink of glass on the seat next between them: Dean was two into a six-pack.

“Time,” Sam croaked.

“Yeah,” Dean said, voice deeper in his exhaustion than their Dad’s even, and Sam shuffled his creaking self upright and raised the map and his torch, found them a little grid of lines with a blue house symbol.

The office wasn’t open overnight but Dean picked up the phone on the wall and after a few minutes a woman in a quilted housecoat and boots emerged from around the back of the building clutching a ring of keys, her hair up in rollers with a showercap stretched over; maybe ten years older than them and when she caught sight of Dean, even sallowed as he was by the bleak yellow security light, regret flashed across her face and her hand went up unconscious to her hairline.

“Thanks, ma’am,” Dean said, without game, and she smiled, small and awkward.

“What we’re here for.” She walked them down. Every room was its own freestanding triangle, weird and looming in the dark. She stopped at the third and unlocked it. “We can settle in the morning. You be wanting breakfast?”

“No,” Sam said, as Dean nodded. “Yeah, I guess. Please.”

She looked between them and shrugged. “I’ll leave it outside at seven. Sometimes you gotta thump the TV.” She pushed the door open, reached in to turn on the light. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“Thanks,” Sam said, and she told them to sleep right and walked away, drawing her coat around.

Sam followed his brother inside; mountains, apparently, was what they’d gone for here in the Tennessee Valley: cobwebs in the high white peak of the roof and pale green starting halfway down the walls. Dean closed his eyes and flopped face-first on the bed. Sam winced at the groan of springs.

“Grab me a Jack and a hot masseuse, will you?” Dean mumbled, into the pillow.

“On it,” Sam said, closing the door behind them and turning the heater on high. In the bathroom he shed his clothes and knocked the shower head higher and let the water pound his shoulders. Took a long, draining piss, braced against the wall, soaking in the heat, days of grime in his creases washing clear, breathing steam. He soaped up and scrubbed, the soles of his feet, behind his knees, his pits, what he could reach of his back, his belly. His dick, his balls, a full comfortable feeling, water in his ears and combing through to his scalp and his mind beaten clean and blank and empty and his skin tingling with being clean. He stayed in there a long time.

The mirror was small and triangular and fixed too low for him. His shoulders stretched past the edges. He swiped at the fog and watched his muscles shift and cloud over again. He’d used to look at big guys with a confusing slaggy burn in his gut. He’d used to think Dean was the biggest guy in the world. He was twelve with his body all soft and he'd stare.

Dean hadn’t really been that big. Back then or, well. He fit under Sam, now. He’d looked down his body at Sam with shocked heat in his eyes and laughed, like he was laughing to himself, soft and in wonder. It had been a long time since Sam had heard something like that.

He came back in the room holding his towel at his stomach. At some point Dean had rolled onto his back and turned the TV on, hitching himself up to a show about couples running around foreign fish markets yelling at each other. He had another Bud in his hand and two empties on the nightstand. He said, “Took your—” and then he looked over and his words died, eyes widening and stuck at belly level as Sam neared. Sam reached with the hand that wasn’t holding his towel up and plucked the beer out of his hand without resistance, and drained it. His ass, bare, carelessly dried, started to feel cold, even with the heater pumping. He could feel his heart thudding in his throat.

Dean raised his eyes, glassy. Freckles standing out, his lips red and wet. Sam had never before thought about leaning down and kissing him. He thought about it now, how it would be to bend his brother back. He thought about Dean groping down to jerk him off last night, rutting against the heel of his hand and coming so fast he didn’t get a chance to make it mean anything.

“Hey,” he said, heard the rough in his voice.

“Hey.” Dean swallowed. His mouth turned down, apologetic. Oh, Sam thought. His cheeks burned, his neck. Oh, no. “I’m kinda beat, Sammy.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, stalled out. His hair dripped on his shoulders.

“I’m probably gonna...go to bed.” Dean looked away, back to the TV, neck bowing, tiny flash of a wince, embarrassment or shame or something, the sum of it a no, a take your dick elsewhere. He reached out, blind, palmed Sam’s calf, squeezed and let go.

“Yeah,” Sam said, after a second, feeling his touch still, his broad dry hand. “Me too.”

He felt pretty dumb about it. Monumentally, epically, shudderingly—he backed away, shifting his towel around, too warm all over and his eyes hot, groping in his bag for clothes, hearing Dean crack another beer behind him and finish it off in a couple of long pulls.

He dressed in the room, and towelled his hair and went to bed. The TV clicked off soon after; the lamp. Six feet away and awake, Sam could tell.

They weren’t like that. That wasn’t the direction they were heading. What possessed him, to imagine otherwise? He was losing it, since Dad died; lost his grip on what normal looked like, sensible, where the bounds of his body were supposed to be, where he was allowed to put his hands, what brother meant. Dean hadn’t woken up looking any better back the first time he tried it and that was something he should have remembered. Dean hadn’t smiled at him this morning and said _hey_ and sank down onto the mattress. He hadn’t said _told you you were gay_ and devoted himself to mockery. He’d forced himself to look at Sam and braced for the hard talk.

After a while he gave up staring at the dark insides of his lids and stared up towards the ceiling, alarm clock numbers and yellow charging LEDs brushing the crossbeam faintly and the black unwelcome void at the peak. Sometimes when he dreamed about Hell it looked like that. Shadows in the dark. Eyes flowering open.

It was useless. Six months now of looking at his brother stretched thin with grief and duty and having no idea how to make it better, no idea how not to be a problem. He should get another room. He turned the idea over: folding the covers back, quieting Dean’s protestations, waking that woman again, knocking on her door and having her open up this time grey and pinched with suspicion, just Sam there by himself with the porch light shining on him, full of weak excuses. He wondered if Henricksen came by in a week, a month, if she’d be able to describe him. If she’d be shocked.

He turned onto his back. “Hey,” he whispered.

He waited, long enough that he wondered if Dean was asleep, or ignoring him, and then Dean’s voice came, gravel. “Man, it’s like three hours until we have to get up.”

“You think if I’d told Ronald the truth from the start we wouldn’t be in this mess?”

A rustle of sheets. “I dunno,” Dean said, after a moment. It gave Sam a pang and he realised he’d wanted Dean to say no, he was blameless, this at least wasn’t his fault. “Maybe. Maybe he would have just gone in there with silver instead of lead.”

“They shouldn’t have shot him like that.”

Dean groaned. “No shit, Sam. Do we have to talk about this now?”

He chewed his lip. “He thinks I killed Jess, doesn’t he. Henricksen.”

Dean made a noise, negating. “He was just trying to get a rise, you said that yourself.”

His throat was tight. He thought he could see the gleam of Dean’s eyes. “Her parents liked me.”

“Course they did,” Dean said. “They wouldn’t believe it. No one who knows you would believe something like that.”

Dad did. Dead on the floor of a hospital room believing exactly something like that, shock of a thought that got him every time and he breathed in deep and held it, compressed it, screwed his eyes shut. Too dark, too late, too much on top of everything else to go there.

“Sam?”

“I’m okay,” Sam said. It was strained.

Movement from Dean’s bed, the springs complaining. The lamp came on as Dean tapped it, a few times until it was a low dirty yellow and when Sam looked over he was sitting, covers folded around his legs. His ring flashed putting his hand to his face. He swore under his breath and Sam froze under a bolt of panic, opened his mouth to get in first.

“I’m sorry about before. I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s fine,” Dean said, not looking at him. Forgiveness, automatic and comprehensive. That was how Dean did it, backwards. Every time Sam didn’t deserve it. He only hoarded his little grudgefests when Sam was in the right. “But, uh.” His Bad News voice was back. “Listen. I should have.... Some stuff’s kinda…got out of hand.”

Sam shook his head. “It’s not, it’s not anything, nothing’s out of hand.”

“It’s not that I don’t--”

“Please,” Sam cut him off, blinking hotly at the ceiling. “Don’t worry about it.”

“It’s – we got a lot on our plates, Sam. Dad, and the Feds, and – who knows how many like Gordon there are out there, and. You’re the Grand Wazoo or whatever.”

“You don’t need to remind me,” he said, and Dean sighed.

Silence, for too long. Dean’s shoulders bowed in the light. He rubbed his eyes again, tapped the lamp off and shuffled back down. “I know. Just... get some sleep, Sammy.”

“Yeah,” he said, after a second, to have said something. “Night.”

It wasn’t like he wasn’t trying. Eyes open or closed, even at the end of these endless days with his legs heavy and his neck sore he could only drift in the dark, and push away the griefs as they came to him, Dad on the floor and Jess without her whole beautiful life she was supposed to have and poor stupid Ronald Reznick and Ava alive and scared somewhere and Dean who he couldn’t make better, he just couldn’t: he couldn’t fix anything for either of them and now they were known to the Feds on top of everything else and one day someplace he’d be sitting with his books and the door would explode and he’d get dragged out of there kicking and confused, his arms wrenched behind his back, his feet cut up on the gravel, and he’d get one last look at Dean’s face, flashing blue and red through cop car windows. It would be that, or worse.

He turned on his side, listened to Dean’s breathing slow, and waited for the day. When he heard the breakfast tray being set down he pushed himself up, stiff. Took care of the need to piss and paused by Dean’s bed on the way back. He was sunk under his covers, chin hidden, brow smooth, hair mussed. He looked like a kid, like Sam remembered him from middle school. He made a noise, a soft _huh_ , eyelids twitching. Sam’s heart turned. He breathed deep, and let it go.

It hadn’t come from nowhere, wanting Dean. But that was, that was just Dean. Everything blurred around him. Everyone. Sam could live with it. He’d lived with worse. He’d been worse, he’d been uglier, he’d been more a threat. It was morning, after a two-day flight, and he’d risen in the bed he went down in, and Dean was still there, and they were still free. They were still brothers. They didn’t need to be anything else than brothers to make it worth it.

He put his jacket on and opened the door, stepped over the tray and found out where they were. Cherokee Inn, lights still dancing around the edge of the sign, seven triangles and the squat office, set back from the highway, on grey and chilly gravel. The road was empty. Over the hills the dawn blazed, a blooming wash of neon, turning the air orange and fading just as fast. It was freezing, a clean and frigid cold. His breath plumed.

There was a bench at the edge of the lot. He sat down, tipped his head back. Pink contrails traced across the vaults of the morning. The breeze lifted his hair, right down to his scalp. He fixed the light in his mind and closed his eyes, bowed his head over clasped hands.

Thank you for this morning, he thought. Let me sleep, let me check out tonight, let today just be a nothing day, please, let nothing happen, and then with the birds jeering at him and a pang of guilt he hurriedly jumbled up afterwards, more loudly: please and keep him safe. Keep him safe, and praise you, if that’s what you want, if it helps.

Footsteps on the gravel behind him.

“Not going all Heaven’s Gate on me, huh Sammy?”

Dean was carrying two polystyrene cups of coffee. Sam was too tired, too empty to feel caught out. He shrugged, unclasped his hands, reached for the cup. “Don’t you think we need all the help we can get?”

Dean braced his thigh on the table and shook his head, mouth turned down. He stared down the eastward road like he was waiting on someone. “I’ll believe it when I see it. You know? That’s the whole point of what we do.”

“We see things all the time,” Sam said. Dean shrugged.

“Anyway that’s my job, looking out for us.” He jerked his chin at the sky. “They’ll have to fight me for it.”

His eyes were red-rimmed, shadows under them still. He hadn’t fixed his hair yet and it made Sam want to pull him in, ruffle him up. He fought down a smile, fond. Some of it probably showed. “You’ve got a high opinion of yourself.”

“The highest,” Dean said, dry. He leaned to the side, squinted at Sam. “You good?”

Sam tilted his head this way, that, sucked his cheek against the coffee. “Tired, mostly.”

“I hear you there,” Dean said. He sniffed, looked around at the lot, the horizon, the buildings. “I bet these used to be teepees.”

“Cherokee Inn,” Sam said, and yawned. “You might be right.”

“Times change, huh.”

Sam hummed, drew his coat around. “You packed? The ants will get breakfast.”

“Not on my watch,” Dean said, and raised his coffee, and pushed to his feet.

The morning stayed clear. Sam spent it opening up old cellphones and snapping SIM cards. There were more than he remembered and he wasn’t sure why they’d all been kept, who Dean was hoping to hear from: a broken flip phone; a knockoff Blackberry; his old Nokia he took to Stanford with half the plastic front snapped away, that got crunched under Jess’s car that weekend up in Six Rivers. It still charged when he plugged the 12v in; still let him scroll through old texts. She’d abused emoticons. Wasted her credit on stupid nothings. She’d never had to worry about money.

There was a text, too, from an unknown number. A few, actually: he’d been more free with his number back then, trying to figure how normal people made friends. But only one he kept coming back to; just, _hey_. 2:32am on January 7th, 2003. No special day. Could have been anyone.

He never deleted it, but he never replied. He should have. It was cruel not to.

He made sure they were all saved to the phone memory before he destroyed the SIM. Put it back in the glove box and found a trash-bag for the rest, Dean in his ear with some tale Sam mostly knew through the retelling, town called Mayor’s Income and a ghost and his wife and their Dad and his shotgun. Sam couldn’t help smiling, felt his lips shape the words as they came: _Son, never take an unhappy marriage for granted._

Just the radio, after that, and more miles and a coffee stop and more miles. The sky at the end of the road turned black, sun sparkling bright and green on the trees ahead, weird dreamlike double-world feel. His eyes kept trying to close on it, that spinning overtired delirium sliding up behind.

“Jesus, Sam,” Dean said, and Sam blinked at him, grunted. “Take a nap already.”

“Yeah,” he said, blurry and slow. “Wake me if you wanna swap.”

“Awesome, I’d love to die a fiery death,” Dean said, reaching and turning the radio down. Sam balled up a hoodie and his eyes closed, and after a while opened again with no change but he was in a room, dim and narrow, bunks against two walls. Through the window and stretched across the horizon were the tall grey blocks of a city. Milwaukee, over the river. On the other side of the door, Dad and Dean were talking. Dad kept asking questions but all he could hear was Dean’s yes sir, no sir. He was a kid again, lonely, waiting for his brother to come for him. He set his elbows on the windowsill and watched the city draw near and felt dread pile up in his chest. They were going there and they shouldn’t, but Dean said yes, sir, sullenly, and Dad opened the bedroom door behind him and looked down at Sam. His eyes were black and his beard was thick and Sam didn’t need to know anything except that it was gonna go wrong and end bad and it was his fault and his dad knew it, his dad could see it in him, and a hand loomed up in the corner of his eye, outside the window, and formed a crooked fist and rapped the pane so loud his child’s heart exploded, terror, monsters, evil, the bad guys, the cops, and he jolted up and awake in the passenger seat to beating wipers and a snap of hail on glass. The treetops thrashed, branches aching.

Dean handed him a bottle of water, wordless. He drank, heart hammering. They’d dropped speed, slow enough to see the ice bounce up off the road. It passed into heavy rain, after a minute, a grey blanket slammed to the ground, obscuring everything but them and the road just ahead. And then that softened too, and the sun picked its way down, where it could, here and there through the clouds.

“Where are we?” He checked his watch and opened the map, peered out the window. He’d slept for an hour and they weren’t where he’d have guessed. The road followed a creek, churning with runoff and rising in places up the banks. He could find neither road nor creek on the map. “What was the last junction? Are we lost?”

“I don’t get lost,” Dean said, which meant yes. He was leaning forward, fretful, eyeballing the hood for hail damage.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“You looked like you needed it.” Dean settled back, glanced over, raised an eyebrow. “Still do.”

Sam sat up, scrubbed his face. They must be pretty deep in Mississippi, the land was so flat and undistinguished, thin bowed trees on the creek-line and grass on the verge, flattened by the rain. He held open the map in his lap and waited for a sign that never came.

“You know,” he said, quiet, out at the world, “all those times Dad was laid out, and I would watch to see if he was breathing. I used to wait for so long.” His eyes stung. He had to set his jaw against the image. The real thing was just different, it turned out. Unmistakable and immutable. He cleared his throat. “Do you dream about him?”

“Yeah,” Dean said, careful. “‘Course I do.”

“Good dreams?”

“Sometimes.” Their speed eased. Dean looked at him, wary, worried. “Is this about... he was dying, Sam, he wasn’t himself.”

“Don’t, Dean, you don’t need to.”

“How many times I gotta say it, man, I’m not gonna let anything happen—“

“I know,” Sam said, soft. “I know.”

They rounded a bend, and the creek angled away from the road and widened, shallower, slower. On the side of the road was a Ford pickup: green and 1970s square, chrome shining, facing them. Dean said ah, and slowed before he reached it, pulled over as much as he could without hitting the turf. The corners of the cars nearly kissed.

Down on a small weathered pier an old guy settled in a folding chair watched them, line in his hand, beard tucked into his jacket.

“How is he not frozen?” Sam said. “It can’t be more than fifty. It had to have rained here too.”

“Trout don’t care for human comfort,” Dean said, turning the engine off. “That’s what makes it a sport.”

Sam huffed. “You’ve never even seen a trout.”

“See one every time I look to my right.”

“Maybe he’s a demon.” Sam got out, stretched his arms as Dean shut his door; leaned across the roof and whispered _Christo_. Dean darted him a sharp quelling look, amused, squelched down the bank with his hands in his pockets and stared upriver. The old-timer lowered his earmuffs, nodded to whatever Dean said. There was some chit chat, some pointing back the way they came. The creek gurgled.

Sam wiped his nose on his sleeve. His face was snap-frozen. He wasn’t comfortable; he wasn’t happy, not in any recognisable way, not in any way that would pass muster in a Stanford counsellor’s office; not in any way that would make his mom glad. But Dean walked back to him, up the slope, collar unfolded, eyes bright from the cold. Dean said to him, overly serious, _no more sleeping, map boy_ , and stomped his feet to knock the mud from his boots before he opened the door, and Sam felt himself smiling.

Bobby called in the afternoon, as they were loading supplies in Indianola: junk and cans and water, mostly, in two five gallon containers. Sam stowed them in the backseat, shook the cramp out of his hands as Dean lowered the trunk and held the phone out for them to bend over.

“Yeah,” he said, pitching his voice low. They were on the far side of the lot, but it was a Trader Joe’s on a weekday, and they weren’t the only people around. “We’re both here.”

“You’ll spoil me,” Bobby said. There was the sound of something banging; pots on a stove, maybe. “You boys over the river yet?”

Dean glanced at Sam, frowning. “No, we’re on our way to Greenville.”

“Smart choice. Your man’s in Vicksburg. Heard from a friend. Guess he knew you were going west and tossed the coin wrong.”

Sam straightened, stomach sinking. “He traced the call,” he said, and Dean shot him a look. “Or do you think he searched the plates?”

“Maybe,” Bobby said. “You been talking to anyone?”

“Who would we talk to? He’s guessing,” Dean said. “He drew a line on a map.”

“Pretty damn good guess,” Bobby said. They were silent. Bobby grunted, rattled something. “Well, not that it’s not been a delight.”

“Thanks, Bobby,” Sam said. Dean echoed him, closed his phone and turned it in his hand, lip between his teeth. Sam frowned. “Maybe we should find another—”

Dean shook his head. “No, nope. Doesn’t change anything. All we gotta do is get there. He’ll overshoot us and end up on the coast. Unless he’s psychic too.”

Sam’s jaw dropped. “You think he could be?”

“Well, it would track with all this luck we’re having.” Dean sighed. “Nah, he’s just doing his job, Sammy. You’re the only psychic in this game.”

“We don’t know that,” Sam said. Dean gave him half a smile but let it go unchallenged. Sam pushed his hands through his hair, tangled, catching on his fingers. There was a breeze, gathering speed across the lot, scattering trash ahead of it. His eyes stung every time he blinked. He ached for something good to do. “Hey,” he said. “Let me take this leg.”

Dean shook his head, got to his feet, closed his hand around the keys. “I’m fine. Come on, sooner we get moving the better.”

Sam sighed. Looked at the sky. “Does it matter if we get there after dark?”

Dean shrugged. “Shouldn’t, so long as the traps haven’t changed. You know what Caleb was like.”

Sam nodded. He didn’t, not the same way that Dean did, apparently. Not well enough to find his secret hideout in the dark, feeding through the woods, a gravel turn-off that led to a dirt turn-off. Cherryville, a hanging sign declared. As their headlights ran over it Sam saw letters underneath, recent, not in a hand he recognised: some joker had written _sur la merde_ , and even with the window up the water was ripe in the air. Frogs and the ring of crickets and no sound of human life once the car cut out.

“You know it’s funny,” Dean said, thoughtful, looking forwards. In the moonlight and the first shine of headlights, Caleb’s place seemed to be a dislocated trailer, built in under the trees, shuttered and long and narrow, a door in the middle. “I could have sworn you came here with us.”

“I’ve never been here in my life,” Sam said.

“Yeah,” Dean said. “I guess I just... imagined it a lot.”

Sam blinked at him, and he turned his head away, creaked the door open and got out. Sam followed, carrying one of the bags. Around the back of the trailer was a six-square deck. Half-rusted table-and-chairs, spiderwebs glowing as the flashlight hit them. Dean cracked the lock and stuck his arm through, frowning, groping. Pulled a shotgun out the gap and handed it to Sam to empty. Crouched to check for tripwires.

It wasn’t so bad, inside, in the roving beams of their lights at least. The morning might reveal different. Musty but not rotting, worn but not broken. Wood panelling bowed, swollen, away from the wall in the kitchen. To Sam’s right, past the shower, a bead curtain lead to a queen bed.

Dean set the Coleman on the dinette table and turned it on, headed back out to the car. Sam started opening cupboards, drawers. A mishmash of everything: cans of uncertain provenance, cutlery, tools, wires, knives, matches, pens; a lighter with a pinup, pouting, breasts surging out of her bikini. Sam smiled. He’d sort of thought of Caleb as sexless, alone all that time. He pocketed it. Give Dean a happy surprise at some point down the road.

“You see any spark plugs in there?” Dean thumped back up onto the deck and inside, swung the weapons bag off his shoulder and onto the couch, set the water on the floor and let a grocery bag fall off his arm, cracked his neck and yawned. “I’ll check out the generator.”

“Leave it for tomorrow, it’s too dark,” Sam said, catching the yawn, his jaw stretching. “We’re just gonna sleep anyway.”

“Yeah?” Dean said, relieved. “Okay.” He turned taps in the sink, air sputtering out the faucet before the water ran smooth; Sam didn’t want to think about what colour it was.

The beads clacked as he pushed them aside. There was a cupboard above the bed, worn sheets and only one thin blanket. Dropcloth over the top of the bed proper. Sam rolled it up. Another blessing of the dark, not being able to see droppings or holes if they were there. Down in the kitchen he heard Dean striking matches and swearing, the click of a kerosene wick winding. The heat wouldn’t make it down here. The walls were thin, and it was cold outside.

“I’m gonna get the sleeping bags,” he told Dean, re-emerging. His head brushed the door frame. “Or we’ll wake up dead.”

Dean nodded, dropped the cage on the heater as Sam hit the ground outside, soft and spongy. The hinges on the trunk screamed and something in the dark rustled in response, a furtive animal sound, and then flat watchful silence. The hair rose on the back of his neck. It had been a while since they’d been out in the woods. It was its own kind of lonely.

Back inside Dean already had the cooler open and a bottle in his hand, at the table, flicking through Dad’s journal. He did that, sometimes; returned to it, the black scratches of Dad’s handwriting, his determined piecemeal notes, his scraps of lore. It was only part of him, but it was something. He hadn’t left much all else behind.

He nudged the cooler with his foot, towards Sam. Sam shook his head.

“I think I’ll just...” He thumbed towards the bed, hesitating. Dean glanced at him, nodded, neutral.

“Night.”

In the bedroom, Sam rolled the bags out on the bed and changed, lay down. A central brace under the thin mattress divided it neatly into two sagging wells. Faint moonlight in the high narrow window and the cold dim glow of the Coleman, scrambled through the beads. He closed his eyes and sleep became a mystery. His arm nagged, dull and sore. He wished he were back in the car. He knew how to sleep, in the car. Engine and road and music taking up all the space in his head. Getting carried along.

Dean had been here, years ago. Maybe lying awake too. Maybe thinking about Sam, at 2:31am on January 7th, 2003, frozen and lonely until he couldn’t bear it, rolling on his side and waking up his phone, not knowing what to write. Not knowing if Sam would reply. He hadn’t. He’d never been as good a brother as he’d wanted to be. Son neither, but he’d missed his chance there.

He pushed up, burritoed himself in his bag and rattled through the beads, bending to grab a beer as he hit the dinette.

The journal had been shut away. Dean was filling in credit card applications, hunched to make use of the light. Sam shoved himself into the other side of the table, cracked his bottle. It was lukewarm and hoppy, head rising up the neck. Dean watched him, expressionless. Turned the lantern up, lowered his head again.

Sam looked around. A few knives on the wall above the dinette: Caleb had favoured military issue, another reason why their dad had liked him. There was a calendar on the wall, Hawaiian beaches. July 2005, sand and sun. Jess had had a couple of months left. He’d pushed off that summer break to work, cash bartending, counting on a hundred summers later, and Dean had been somewhere, alone out on the road, getting closer. And their dad had been on the hunt, as always. Ticking down his days.

“Hey,” he said, and Dean glanced up. “What’s the story with Dad and Caleb?”

“Caleb told him to calm down once and it went from there.” Dean turned a page over, frowned. “I don’t think Dad thought it would be permanent.”

Never acted like it, Sam could say. But their dad burned bridges so easy, hell. Maybe he figured the rebuild was easy too.

He drank, watched Dean commit a federal crime in careful capital letters. Nearly midnight. Seventy-two hours since Milwaukee. Fuck it, he thought, and put his bottle on the table and tipped sideways, shifted until he was on his back. Tried to tuck his bag around him from the inside. It was chilly, still; uncomfortable, thin seat padding and so short that he had to bend his knees. Light in his eyes. He closed them, and his body unlocked.

Dean let out a sigh, deep, like he’d been holding his breath.

“You’re gonna fall off,” he said, slow-tired and amused. Sam turned his face towards the backrest, reset his shoulders. He’d had enough practice on a seat like this, he wasn’t going anywhere.

“When did you say you were here?”

“2003,” Dean said, shuffling paper. Sam opened his eyes to the ceiling, off-white and stained.

“2003?”

“Yeah. Hated it. Lost half my bodyweight to mosquitoes.”

“Summer?”

“Yeah,” Dean said. Sam chewed his lip, stupidly disappointed. He’d laid a trap for himself. “It’s smaller than what I remembered. In the morning you’ll be able to see the lake from the deck. You can go out on it, if you wanna freeze your nuts off.”

“I’ll pass,” Sam said. Wiped his nose on the bag, yawned. “How long are we gonna stay?”

“How long’s a piece of string?”

A week, two, maximum, Sam would guess. Laying low had never been Dean’s forte and something would go wrong, something would pull them out sooner or later. They’d go out for resupply and there’d be an obituary that caught Dean’s eye. Maybe he’d get a vision and end up crying on his knees again. Maybe Ava would call, frantic, and he’d be able to say yes, yes, wait there: I’m coming to help you.

“Hey,” Dean said. The seat creaked. “You know what I thought about today? Remember when you got so sick on sun tea?”

Sam grimaced. “Yeah, dude, I nearly turned inside out. What brought that up?”

“We passed a general store with a sign on the side and I had this really vivid—” Dean made a soft explosion sound “—flash. How clammy you were. Nine years old.”

“Spent the whole night in the bathroom,” Sam said. Still a gold standard for miserable nights. Cold hard tiles under thin bedclothes, Dean pressing water on him.

“Scared the shit out of me. You know I begged Dad to take you to hospital?”

Sam pushed up on his elbows, squinted over the table. “Wait, what?”

“Yeah.” Dean shrugged. “Said, you know, I’d drive and dump you, or whatever. One of the cleaners at the motel said you’d be okay, so Dad said no.”

Sam remembered her: starchy palm against his forehead, pale eyes, Eastern European accent. She swam in his memory because he’d been crying. Dean had been holding his hand so tight he’d thought his bones might never bend back into shape.

“I was okay,” Sam said. “In the end.”

“Always gotta show me up.” Dean smiled. “Gave me nightmares, man.”

“I was okay because of you.”

“Nah, Sam. You were okay because you’re made out of steel.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.” He said it quiet, insistent, twisting in Sam’s chest where he was at his worst and Sam sat up and hunched the bag over his shoulders and leaned forward, made Dean startle back, put his pen down.

“I’m _not_ ,” he said low. “We got so much coming down on us Dean, and Dad’s dead and we’re in the middle of the woods hiding from the Feds and they’re the _least_ of it and I’m not… I’m not _okay_ about it.”

Dean shook his head, set his jaw. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“You can’t stop fate,” Sam said.

Dean held his gaze, clear. “Watch me.”

It hurt. Sam loved him and Dean had laughed, when Sam touched him, soft and wondering, he’d had his hand in Sam’s hair and he hadn’t let go for the longest time and it was stupid to pretend things hadn’t changed, since college, since Dad died, he wasn’t a kid anymore and they weren’t the same as they used to be and they could never go back. They could never be who they used to be. They didn’t have enough anymore to be that. Sam didn’t have enough. All he had was Dean.

“Hey,” he said. He didn’t sound normal. “You wanna get drunk?”

Dean blinked, face falling, breaking out of his certainty, and looked away, grabbed for his beer reflexively, his throat bobbing. His voice heavy. “Sam.”

“I do,” Sam said. “I think, you know. I really do.”

Dean pursed his lips down at his beer, turned it in his hands. “You always say shit like it’s so easy.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. Rough. “That’s me. Everything’s a breeze.”

“That’s not what I meant, don’t put that on me.” Dean churned up the label with his thumbnail. “I’m...” He winced, his teeth showing, like the words were sour. “You’re my little brother, Sam. And there’s only so much I can...” His hand shaped something, the boundary of something, inarticulate. “I don’t get how something like that can just happen.”

Sam bit his tongue, lowered his gaze to the tabletop. Little green formica flecks. You just do it, that’s how. You get wasted or you find the permission or you let the want be its own permission and you move the muscles of your arm and touch and breathe someone else and maybe make them happy for a moment and take some happiness for yourself.

“It was nice,” he said, and sighed, and leaned back, rubbed his eyes. Gave up. “That’s all I meant.”

“I don’t need _nice_ , Sam,” Dean said, small. “I need to not—be _drowning_.”

Sam tilted his head.

“I’d never let you drown,” he said, and Dean frowned, surprised. “It’s not all on you, Dean, you gotta let me, you gotta let me try.”

Dean’s lips thinned. “I told you I can’t—”

Sam shook his head. “I’m not talking about that, I’m just saying—we’re all that’s left and I’m a good swimmer. Taught by the best.”

Dean studied him a while. “Didn’t that lifeguard chick teach you how to swim?”

“Eh,” Sam said, shrugging a shoulder, curled his mouth down. “You gave me the basics.”

Dean huffed, soft, through his nose, faint smile, maybe remembering that time or all the other times, for everything, always and everything: Dean got there first. Sam’s eyes stung, unexpected, pain in his chest like he was unfolding; how could it keep happening to him that he learned how deep he’d taken Dean inside, another hook discovered, lodged, irretrievable. There was no difference between that and wanting to touch him; it all blurred together and it was gonna be impossible, near on impossible to separate it out and put it away. He’d try. He’d been looking for something good to do.

A minute passed, quiet. There was air in the room. It wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be. He drank his beer, and Dean did the same.

“Okay,” he said, when he was done, and rapped his knuckles on the table. “Bed time, I think.”

“Sammy,” Dean said, unhappy.

“We’re good,” Sam said, sure, and Dean nodded, eyes on the table, cheek sucked in like he was biting it. “Night, Dean.”

“Night.”

He stood, looked down at the top of Dean’s head. Curled his hands in the sleeping bag and pulled it around. “Go to sleep at some point, will you?”

“I make no promises,” Dean said, having just sworn to save Sam from himself. Promises and oaths in different categories, Sam supposed, and left him finishing his bottle. Dragged through the bead curtain as it swished and clacked and found his place again on the bed, punching the pillow into a shape that didn’t hurt his neck. It was easier this time, at least. Sinking down. The night outside thrummed, an owl screeching or a victim, and under that, the snick of a bottlecap. Dean would sleep out there, if he slept at all. Sam should have taken him his sleeping bag. He would next time.

There was a weight on his chest, dreaming. Engine noise creeping up through his legs and crushing him. He was shotgun in the Impala, and through the window to his right was Dean, driving the Impala too, in the next lane, window down, elbow hanging over. Dean threw him a glance every now and then, grinning big and cheesy, so everything must be okay. Sam had no idea who was at the wheel, and he was afraid to look.

When he woke he was on his side, turned to the inside of the bed. He’d drooled, copiously, his cheek and the corner of the pillow wet. It was well past dawn and the light from the window was stark and white. He was facing his brother, half a foot away, and it took a while for his eyes to focus. Dean was snoring. Mouth slightly open, lips chapped. Freckles stood out along his cheekbones. Lashes dark. He looked boneless, surrendered, perfect. His arm was outside his sleeping bag, heavy across Sam’s side, like he was gathering Sam in.

“Hey,” Sam whispered. Dean’s eyes moved under the lids, but he didn’t wake. Sam breathed out, and closed his eyes. _Thank you,_ he thought. He didn’t know to who.

He slept again.

The end

**Author's Note:**

> feedback/concrit welcome. 
> 
> Rebloggable tumblr link [here](https://nigeltde-fic.tumblr.com/post/642556476672589824/practical-men-of-the-world-15055-words-by) for those so inclined.


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